


The Stalker and the Meddler

by Kestrel_Sparhawk



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Victorian writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-07-20
Packaged: 2018-02-09 00:50:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1962684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kestrel_Sparhawk/pseuds/Kestrel_Sparhawk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alexander Spavin believes himself to be the reincarnation of King Arthur, destined to guide the steps of a most unsatisfactory modern Prince of Wales in Albion. The prime minister, however, thinks otherwise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stalker and the Meddler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lasermignon (grey_hunter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey_hunter/gifts).



In every age, there are people like Mr. Alexander Spavin. They come to a conclusion which is not demonstrably false, and set their hearts on it. So it was that Christians in the first century refused to believe that the smartest person in their midst had died and was buried in a stranger’s tomb. So it is that children of countless generations have paid careful attention to water jiggling in a cup on a slightly uneven table and believe that Elijah is refreshing his thirst. So it will be that generations unborn will burn red paper money so that their ancestors will have it to spend in the afterlife.

And so it happened that Alexander Spavin, Esq. believed in his heart of hearts in reincarnation in general and, most specifically, that he had once been that highest king of all, Arthur, reborn into the body of someone with rather less warlordly muscle if probably more priest-like education.

Believing this, it behooved him to declare himself to be on a quest; and at the age of 27, that question clearly was to be the location of King Arthur’s ally, Merlin, in order for Mr. Spavin and Mr. Merlin to save England together in its time of greatest need.

What that greatest need might be, Alexander Spavin already knew. The time of chivalry had been a time when Kings ran things – and it had been the finest period of England. Pre-feudal paganism had been embarrassing; what’s more, it had lost its battle, proving feudalism more powerful. 

Post-feudal Democracy had destroyed the land; the King ran nothing now, the Prime Minister everything. That had to be reversed. Money which could have been spent improving the net worth of nobles and impressing other nations was spent helping coal miners have more children who thought themselves too good to work, as their fathers had, in those very mines. Margaret Thatcher, who understood that workers worked best when the children of the lazy and unnecessary ones died, had at least gotten some of the workers off the dole and lowered the birth rate by removing babies’ free milk and such from their handouts list. But Prime Minister Lupin Ancel had reversed such wise policies, and once more the royal castles were looking a little shabby while the children of miners had rosy cheeks and arrogant attitudes towards their betters.

True, the Crown Prince was an annoying young man, far more likely to be dragged drunk from a gutter in the morning than do his duty and give his life for England. But the Prime Minister was among the youngest in history, barely older than Alexander himself, and not in the least hesitant to insult the Prince’s proclivities for alcohol, dancing, and gambling, while pretending to be sympathetic to the Prince’s father the King, who was (it was rumored) dying from dementia and unable to exercise his own royal will to force Prince Melliflor into a more sober set of behaviors.

Prime Minister Ancel had once been rather interesting to Alexander: he’d been awarded silver in the Olympics for dressage, was rumored to be excellent at fencing and kickboxing, and in all ways exercised the magic of the modern age -- charm and charisma -- so much more practical than the magic of… well, magic. But then he had embraced politics, Labour politics at that, and had rocketed up through the ranks because (it was supposed) he was clever. Since he himself was the son of a Welsh miner, and had grown fat off the government teat somehow despite Dame Margaret and her successors’ policies, Alexander knew he could not possibly be as clever as he was purported to be – nor as charming. He certainly wasn’t attractive, with pale yellow hair and washed out blue eyes and a stocky body – not exactly the British noble ideal. Well, not after the Saxons had been defeated.

Worst of all, he was gay. Not in a respectable, quietly-rumoured-with-rolled-eyes traditional way, but openly gay. He said so. In public. Before he was even outed by the successors to the Daily Mail. Which apparently meant that the only possible speculation about him would be where he would toss his handkerchief and who would snatch it up, because he had no partner, or at least none he admitted to.

He’d been seen in the company of many men – but also women, so it wasn’t easy to make the romantic links. The prince’s cousin Baron Gavin was his most frequent companion – but since Gavin flirted with everything that moved, no one could say that meant anything. Surely if they were linked romantically, Lupin Ancel (whom Alexander had nicknamed the Meddler, owing to his proclivities for giving away other people’s money to the poor) would have protested Baron Gavin’s flirting. (A noble, even if only a baron, hanging out with a common person! It was disgusting. When Mr. Spavin was King again, the first thing he would do after changing his name back to PenDragon by deed poll – no, royal Declaration -- would be to remove the Baron’s title. Possibly his head, though the fact Mr. Spavin was not as blood thirsty as in his earlier incarnation might be attributed to centuries of less violent solutions to royal problems, and should be respected.)

Mr. Spavin did not have to work for a living. His father in this life was Sunder Spavin, famous for his tabloids. It was he who had bought the rights to the defunct Daily Mail and re-established it as the primary scandal sheet in all Albion. He readily ordered his editors to give Mr. Spavin the necessary credentials to follow anyone he wanted anywhere and report on them, and damn the libel laws. That's what retainers to lawyers were for.

So it was that Mr. Alexander Spavin, usually called the Stalker by his unimpressed journalistic brethren, set his first goal as bringing down the Meddler and the second as finding Merlin, whom he felt most likely would turn out to be someone in the House of Commons, and unlikely to be a lord. While he was at it, he would see if he could set the feet of Prince Melliflor on the path to being an acceptable heir to King Arthur after he returned to his reign. If Mr. Spavin lived his life as he had lived his past one, he was unlikely to have an heir of his own body. (Mr. Spavin was rather interested in other young men's bodies, but that of course was inappropriate and not to be pursued.)

***

“What the fuck are you doing in my house?” a cranky Prime Minister asked when Alexander sneaked into his office and took a picture. The Minister’s flaxen hair looked as if he never even dragged a comb through it, his tight jeans had a hole beginning in one knee, and his face looked as if he had been out all night drinking – which, since it was about 4 a.m., would have been quite a lot of alcohol even if he started after dark, which Alexander Spavin (oh, let's call him Alex, which he wanted to be called as a child) doubted..

“Your office belongs to the Crown,” Alex replied sententiously. “You are temporary.”

“So are tenants, but they have a right to privacy from their landlords,” the Meddler responded, automatically putting a manila file folder over the notebook in which he’d been writing. Alex wished he’d thought to take a picture of the open notebook first. “At any rate, you’re not my landlord. You’re a tiresome little twit with jumped-up reporter credentials, and how you got past the bodyguards I’ll never know.”

Alex did not enlighten him that the PM’s personal bodyguard was sleeping in a chair, while the two guards at the front door had been distracted by dogs having a fight a few feet down the street. The PM was one of those people who would probably go all miffed about ASPCA rules too, and it was difficult enough finding stray dogs and bringing them to Downing Street to turn loose with the timing right for a fight.

“Are you always drunk when working?” he asked sweetly, changing the subject.

The PM’s blue eyes narrowed. “Only at 4 in the morning,” he answered. “Don’t you think it’s time you _stopped_ working?”

“The people have a right….”

“If the people did have a right to know, you wouldn’t let them, you little fascist.”

‘My, my, wouldn’t they find it interesting how you call members of the press names?”

“Probably not,” the Meddler said, tidying his notebook into a drawer and locking the drawer from a large wheel of keys hanging from his belt loop. “By now, everyone and his grandmother must know what I call you, at any rate.” And that was true, because the Prime Minister had called him a snot, twit, clodpole, and many other names. Fascist, while new, did not seem all that far afield.

“What are you doing working so late?” Alex plowed on, determined that the Meddler would not get the upper hand.

The Meddler frowned. “I’m going to stage an intervention. And I suspect you’re coming along whether I want you to or not.”

Alex adjusted his shirt just a little. “I go where News takes me.”

The Meddler stood up and stalked out of his house, shoving his bodyguard on the shoulder hard enough that the guard blinked awake.

“Come on, Lance.”

The three of them, in single file (with Alex last, since he was pretending to be uninvolved) walked around the corner and into the PM’s car, waiting for them. After a 15 minute drive, they arrived at rather a nice, if large, house. Noisy generic rock sounds came from the ballroom.

The Meddler, proving that Alex’ title for him was appropriate, stalked forward, shoved a large, clearly tipsy man out of the way, grabbed a handful of someone’s collar, and dragged him into the empty foyer.

The collar was a lovely blue, as was the shirt, but the Meddler’s firm grip and the wearer’s weight led to a loud rrrrrip, and the collar came almost completely off before its owner abruptly stopped struggling and flopped into an untidy heap of once-pristine clubbing clothes at the Meddler’s feet.

“Now see what you’ve done,” he protested feebly. Alex, fearing he recognized the voice, came from out behind the bodyguard – he generally preferred not to be involved in contretemps – and peered at the man on the floor.

It was as he feared. Big-eared, messy-haired, and as lanky and loose-limbed as that very ugly American president Lincoln supposedly had been hundreds of years previously … yes, it was Prince Melliflor, drunk and annoyed, but floppy enough not to pull himself up off the floor successfully as he attempted to punch the Prime Minister from his fallen position.

Alex couldn’t take a picture of that – of the Prince too drunk to even notice that he couldn’t currently reach his enemy. The enormous, tipsy bystander giggled (giggled?) and came forward, pulling under the Prince’s armpits until he got him vertical.

“Sorry, highness,” the Meddler said perfunctorily. He seemed to be staring at the pale arm framed by the ripped collar and shirt. 

A man who most definitely was not tipsy, and who wore the traditional undercover outfit of black suit and earpiece, stalked stiffly forward out of the ballroom just as the Prince attempted again to punch the Meddler, missing if not by a mile at least a few hundred paces. The undercover man (probably M6) glared at the large, tipsy man who appeared to be the Prince’s bodyguard, who shrugged apologetically and put a large arm around the prince’s chest, pulling him out of reach of the Meddler.

M6 man turned to Alex and touched the bug in his ear. “Backup, please. Press.”

To Alex’ surprise, the Meddler grabbed Alex’ arm and brought him a bit closer to his own bodyguard and out of reach of both Prince Melliflor and Mr. Undercover.

“No, Leo, you can’t do that. What good is an intervention if the Prince isn’t humiliated?”

Leo spoke rapidly into his ear before he glared at the Meddler. “What do you mean, intervention? And you may not recall this, sir, but I mainly exist so the Prince is not subject to public humiliation.”

“There’s the problem.” 

Prince Melliflor, who had been struggling to release his arm from his bodyguard’s hold, proved himself to have been not entirely helpless by suddenly bringing his other arm down and into the guard’s solar plexus, then taking advantage of his release to stagger forward and into the Meddler’s range. Here, he unfortunately stumbled, but the Meddler, the only one with free arms, caught him before he fell and pulled him forward, to lean the Prince on his own shoulders.

“Honestly, try for some dignity,” he said to the Prince, as if he were a noble or the Prince was just an ordinary person, Alex thought resentfully.

The Prince, thus appealed to, gagged and retched, and the Meddler hastily pushed him away just in time for the prince to throw up on Leo.

At which time, the Meddler, quite rudely, laughed.

“I don’t _want_ to be prince,” Prince Melliflor complained, nearly falling to the floor again as his bodyguard almost absentmindedly caught him and held him upright.

“Suck it up; it’s your turn,” the Meddler responded. He caught hold of Leo and neatly divested him of his jacket, which fortunately had caught most of the Prince’s sick. Alex glanced around to see if others were coming, alerted by the combination of unpleasant noises, but the lobby remained empty. When he looked back at the group in front of him, the jacket was gone and the floor clean. The bodyguard had released the prince, who had again fallen forward into the prime minister’s arms.

“Ick, you smell disgusting,” the Meddler said.

“I can fix that.” The Prince closed his eyes, then blinked them open.

The Meddler looked at Alex and frowned. “What’s he doing here still?”

The Prime Minister’s own bodyguard walked over. “I think you should come with me, sir.”

Alex backed away a step. He noticed that the Prime Minister had picked the Prince up and had him in a fireman’s carry, which he did not appear to find especially taxing.

“You shouldn’t treat the Prince like that,” Alex said, unable to find anything else to say. “Have more respect.”

“No time,” the Meddler said succinctly. “He’s going to be King in a couple of hours, and has to be sober by then.”

Alex stared at the Meddler and searched for a way to ask his question. “How do you know that?”

The Meddler grinned unpleasantly, and stroked the Prince’s shoulder almost affectionately. “He told me so, yesterday.”

“Are you suggesting that the Prince is… er… facilitating his own father’s death?”

“Nah,” the Meddler said easily, shaking the Prince a little. “He just has talent, that’s all. Mer… Melliflor, you’ve got a job to do.”

The Prince lifted his head a little, and the Prime Minister set him down on a padded bench and then sat crosswise in front of him, apparently unperturbed by the rather lewd position. “Sweetie, that little fascist is asking stupid questions.”

“Which fascist?” Melliflor asked drowsily, and then leaned his head on the Prime Minister’s strong shoulder. 

“The one who thinks he’s King Arthur.”

“Oh.” Melliflor grinned drowsily into the Meddler’s eyes. “Yeah, anyone who thinks they’re the reincarnated King Arthur is very, very crazy. And definitely a fascist.”

The Meddler smirked. “Very crazy. Concentrate. I’m never going to let you drink again. One lifetime in taverns is enough.”

Melliflor squeezed his blue eyes shut. Alex felt his head begin to ache horribly, and then suddenly it was gone. He was back standing in the Office of 10 Downing Street, next to the Prime Minister. Oddly, sitting on the desk snuggled into the Meddler’s Arms was Prince Melliflor.

“Did I interrupt something?” Alex asked, torn between his desire to be rude to the Meddler and his respect for royalty.

“Nothing at all,” Prince Melliflor said, and snickered.

“Just my plans for uniting the West within 20 years,” the Meddler said.

Alexander Spavin refused to be concerned. After all, he was the great King Arthur, and the Meddler could not possibly stand up to that, once he came into his rightful power. 

And yet…. Something niggled at the corner of his brain. But it left before he could catch it.

“Then I’ll let you get on with it,” he said. He glanced out the door to where the Meddler’s bodyguard lay asleep in his chair. Again, a little electrical circuit in his brain wiggled – but nothing connected.

He turned back to bid the Prince a polite goodnight, and was horrified to find him with his legs and arms both wrapped around the Meddler, in the apparent process of sucking out his tonsils.

The Meddler did not appear to mind.

 

END

**Author's Note:**

> This was a hallucination. It's not supposed to be my first Arthur/Merlin story. Really. But it was a gift for Stray, who wanted me to change it for very good reasons. Since I'm now working on better fic, it's staying the way it is. Sorry.


End file.
